Cold-case cops are re-examining the unsolved murder of a Brooklyn couple more than 20 years ago after The Post discovered irregularities in the initial investigation.

Howard Green, 51, and his girlfriend, Carol Marron, 33, were bludgeoned to death in 1979, police said. Their mutilated, blood-drained bodies were discovered by a boy walking his dog in West Paterson, N.J., investigators said.

Satanic paraphernalia was found at the time inside the couple’s downtown Brooklyn apartment, one investigator recalled.

Two weeks ago, The Post reported that confusion among detectives from Brooklyn’s 88th Precinct and the West Paterson Police Department, along with the Passaic County prosecutor’s office, resulted in the case going cold during the original probe.

The Brooklyn Cold Case Squad is now warming up the investigation.

A New York police spokesman, Sgt. Dennis Bootle, said a detective will re-examine evidence.Jamie Schram and Post Wire Services

A thief was allowed to walk off a cruise ship with a Picasso etching when organizers avoided searching passengers before they got off because it was easier to write the theft off as a loss.

The 12-inch etching disappeared from a wall display on the Fantasy ship last week during a four-day art-auction cruise to the Bahamas, the Orlando Sentinel reported yesterday.

Officials said they decided to write it off as a loss because it was easier than going through the trouble of searching the 2,500 passengers and 1,000 crew members.

The etching, valued at $12,400, is one of a series of 347 works the Spanish-born artist created in 1968.

A British historian claims a group of Chinese sailors reached America’s shores 70 years before Italian navigator Christopher Columbus.

Gavin Menzies, a 64-year-old retired Royal Navy submarine commander, said archaeological discoveries support his thesis that the Chinese mapped the world between 1421 and 1423 before destroying most of their records and abandoning global seafaring.

“If people disagree with me, they have got to come up with an alternative scenario,” he said. “I say there is none.”

Menzies said he had located the wrecks of Chinese Adm. Zheng He’s 1421 fleet in the Caribbean, but says he will not reveal its exact location until he publishes a book on his findings.

LONDON – Older men are better lovers and have fewer impotence problems than their younger counterparts – debunking the idea of “male menopause” as a myth peddled by drug companies to sell products, according to a British psychologist.

Dr. Lorraine Boule, a professor at Sheffield University, told the British Psychological Society conference Friday that men became more skilled sexually as they age.

“Older men sustain erections for longer, are longer coming to orgasm, and satisfy women better,” she said. “Sexual activity does diminish with age, but the quality should get better.”